Hey everyone. We actually waited two weeks(2 Days early lol) to release an update, we're pretty proud of that. It's sometimes difficult not to release an update whenever, because we love sharing our progress and getting feedback from you guys. Development progress from these last two weeks is not as substantial as the few previous ones as our game engine has been crashing constantly, as well, it has just been extremely slow.
Dynamic Artificial Intelligence
Dynamic Artificial Intelligence is in it's very early stage, we just started working on it about one day ago. We thought we would include it to get some feedback on the concept. Although there isn't a lot to it, it's still quite interesting. Northern Regime will include a variety of different soldier camps posted along the landscape. Camps will either be; friendly, neutral, or hostile. When approaching a hostile camp they will shoot on sight with no questions asked. Coming across a neutral camp will be slightly different, If your weapons are holstered they will not engage in combat. You're free to walk around and explore their camp at your own will however, if you do pull out a weapon, accidentally or on purpose they will attack right away. We will be sure to expand on the different scenarios and approaches the player may take. For instance, you may pick up one of their items from the ground causing them to draw on you. The idea of maybe jailing the player depending on what he/she did or how he/she acted is in the air. The third camp is friendly, no matter what you do they will not attack based on their loyalty to you or your faction, however, attack friendly and even neutral soldiers will decrease your reputation substantially.
Reputation & Role Playing
It's been decided to bring back reputation and how apparent it will be in Northern Regime. Reputation and Role Playing are going to play a very large part in the players experience. We already touched on this in the section above, basically how your reputation decreases, but we are going to open it up and get in depth. If your reputation is absolutely terrible even friendly factions will be inclined to attack you. Camps and various soldiers will not be the only groups that reputation effects, Northern Regime is also going to involve; Traders, travelers, bounty soldiers, lost citizen's, homeless soldiers, and a few more as we progress. None of these groups will attack you, especially if your reputation is good, even if your reputation is extremely bad as they will fear you even more, however, there is the perk of them having the random chance of giving you items if your reputation is higher than normal. When approaching a random traveler or any character described above, having poor reputation they of course will not attack you, they will act kind and offer various items they have, seaming as if they like you but inside they are more fearful than anything else. These AI groups will dynamically wait for a good chance to attack you, whether it's when you holster a weapon or turn your back. Everything you do in the world will substantially effect your game play. The more evil of a character you are the harder it's going to be to actually play Northern Regime comfortably. Of course you will always have the option to increase reputation based on different tasks you take and items you give to those who need them the most. Even hostile factions can be turned to neutral and maybe even friendly.
Real World Location
It's pretty tough to design a large open world game, talking about time consumption and also even realism. I've never been the best at designing realistic landscapes and areas in games, to fix this major issue we decided to take data from a real world location in Northern Dakota(Where NR Takes Place) we took that data and inserted it into our game engine and actually created a world from it. This means Northern Regime actually takes place in a real world location. Not only is this much, much faster, it's also way more realistic. It's quite interesting too, I find myself just wandering around the map for hours exploring unique locations and different landscapes. I feel like I am actually walking through beautiful North Dakota. I hope players will really enjoy this and get immersed in it's uniqueness.
Procedural Texturing
Another thing that has helped us a ton is procedural texturing. just like building a real world, texturing would take months especially to get a realistic feel and once again something I am not really good at. This procedural texturing is not completely random, it's more so based on the height of the terrain. The higher you go, the more rock and snow you'll experience. the lower in altitude you travel you'll see increased grass and decreased snow. It's never going to totally feel realistic but it's definitely a step in the right direction.
Procedural Objects
The world as it stands right now is about 60 kilometers in radius, and around 40 miles total. This creates a somewhat large complication. Placing loot, enemies, camps, etc. would take a very, very long time, time that could be spent in a more important function. A solid compromise would be to randomly and procedurally generate all of the enemies and objects. This may make it feel a little more realistic and definitely more unique to each player. However, procedural generation is really complicated and takes a lot of brain power. We already have a solid idea on how to do it. It's not going to be entirely random or totally procedural just to make it a little easier on us. We have already started on this generating pretty smalls objects like guns, coffee, and water cantines. This is actually fairly easy so I'm sure created other objects won't be the most difficult thing in the world. The worst outcome will be bugs like objects glitching in the ground causing frustration. We are going to make sure it works properly before we release.
Animals, Nature, And The Ecosystem.
Something we feel like will really make Northern Regime a different and unique survival game is how everything in the world is connected. We don't want to create a generic survival game because let's be honest, there are way too many out there. I'm not trying to slander survival games because I really do enjoy them I just think we all need something else on the table. I am going to use some information in a response I made to someone who started a discussion on this subject. Animals will be quite dynamic in a few senses. Regular gun fire will be a cause to deter animals from your area. The more gunfire in a particular area will cause serious migration. If you are a trigger friendly player odds are you will struggle to find animals to hunt. Another dynamic is excessive hunting, increased hunting in a location will cause other breeds to avoid those areas and take paths else where. Not only does this decrease your chance of finding animals to hunt it will also decrease the population and the likelihood of animals breeding. So Here's another dynamic : Having too many animals in your area will actually cause a decreased amount of plants and plant like resources. There's a plant in Northern Regime that is used to heal and replenish hunger, by adding it to boiled water then drinking. Deer and Moose are actually very likely to eat this, which may cause you to die. The more plant you yield will cause the animals of the area to have less food leading to starvation and death. It may sound extremely hard but really it's not that bad it just adds something strategy inducing into the game-play. Everything you do will directly effect the ecosystem.
Summary
Two weeks is a pretty long time to wait for an update, the reason why there is so much to touch on. We may have missed quite a few things but will be sure to include them into the next update. We hope you guys enjoy what has been added. If you want more constant updates you can follow our blog. If you want to check it out, it covers a lot of what I just talked bout with images and videos. Thank you everyone!
http://www.northernregime.com/aga-blog
Pre-Alpha 2.0.5
Introduction
Hey everyone. We have decided to start releasing update notes every two weeks now. We were posting quite randomly and possibly too much, we are going to slow it down so we don't annoy everyone. If you do want to see constant updates you can follow our Twitter Or you can follow our Blog Now that, that has been said, let's get into some notes and updates.
Name Change
"Northern Regime" has officially been changed to "Northern Regime : 1862" The decision was made to stop some confusion revolving around the actually era and timeline that the Northern Regime takes place.
Open World
The very first build of Northern Regime was an open world game that was cool and interesting however, it was confusing, a little dry, and it was not as fun as it could, or should have been. We are taking a whole new approach to the open world style. Not only will this be fun and captivating, if done right, it will also be unique and different. This is a huge concern and I am sure it is to all of the followers of Northern Regime. There are so many open world survival games out there, all usually taking on the same theme that I think it really has deterred the average gamer from this genre.
Voice Actor / Story Mode
This is one big idea that will hopefully separate us from other survival open world games. We have hired a voice actor to give the character, you control, more life to make him feel less like a 3 dimensional model and more like someone you enjoy being around. When you explore this beautiful land your character will comment naturally on the different things you stumble upon. If you stumble upon a valley he'll tell you what he feels, if you see a camp raided by Native Americans he'll express his emotions, if you kill a deer he may feel remorse and some guilt. We are going to try our best to make this feel natural and beautiful in a sense. When exploring open worlds it's easy to feel lonely even if it is just a video game, this will help make it feel like you have a companion in your journey.
We are going to hire a writer to create a story that goes along side history with a little fiction to spice it up. The hardest part will be making it dynamic and 360 degrees. Since the wold is open world we need to be able to tell a story at any area. What I mean by this is the story should be just as enticing and exciting even if you started it from the end, middle, or start and we already have a good plan/outline for it.
Hunting
Hunting is going really well. It surprising how much immersion it can actually ad to the player experience. Currently the only animal present is a large male deer. It wanders, eats, and can hear you walking. Most are very timid and afraid, making hunting challenges in many aspects. You can kill the deer but right now it just gives you the meat as soon as it is dead. We'll be changing this to a cool skinning function. You'll get the meat and the fur to keep you warm. Stock piling meat will not be a great idea, the meat will go bad based on dynamic timing and the temperature.
Dynamic Breeding
When you spawn in your first game there will be a random start number of all animals. When you refresh the game this will not be changed. The number of animals you get in the start is what you get...except, all animals will have dynamic breeding. If you let the animals you see pass by the more that breed will increase as there is more to mate and give birth to more. However, the more you kill the greater decline in their species and the less likelihood of reproducing. There is also a chance of that whole species actually going extinct in your area. This will be a great challenge in survival.
Dynamic Snow/Weather
Small but crucial to the immersion. The snow patterns, speed, and density will continuously and dynamically change depending on the weather and the sky. Sky boxes will change at random giving the player something beautiful too look at if sunny and sad to look at if the sky is dark and very snowy.
Conclusion
We hope you have enjoyed this update, this wasn't all that we had to say but if we were to type out everything it would just be unnecessary and fill up your feeds, instead we chose to include just the key notes. Thank you everyone we will see you soon.
What Direction Should Northern Regime Go In?
Hey guys. We've made a poll because we are looking for your input!
Northern Regime : Release Details.
What Alpha 2.0.0.0 Includes.
2 Different weapons; musket(Primary) and double barrel pistol(Secondary)
7 Total maps, including one friendly map to sell items and purchase items from a shop.
Randomized looting and inventory system.
Leveling and experience system.
Hunger/ survival system.
New map selection system. You can now re enter maps to attack the same groups again to earn experience and gain additional items.
Geographical weather system, although there are not enough maps to see this work, as you progress through the United States the climate will change accordingly. When you start Northern Regime it will be cold and frigid as you move South it will slowly change in weather and looks, as well as the types of enemies you encounter.
Of course there is so much more in the game, the list just includes some main pin points of what you should expect.
Starting Price
Northern Regime will have an initial starting price of $11.99 Usd. Price is likely to change as we see progression. Of course it will only change on full release and we are not completely sure whether it will go up or go down.
Patches & Update Road Map
Patches will come out every single day to fix the bugs and errors people will most definitely receive. We hope people will remain some what patient, but of course we can understand how infuriating bugs and early access mishaps can be! Updates will come out every two weeks after release. The reason for the some-what longer updates is because we want each update to feel almost like a brand new game, and an adventure. We'll be adding at least 6-10 brand new maps each update with new weapons, drops, items, graphics, improvements, etc. We are going to try our hardest to give our followers what they deserve in a fresh way every time. On release make sure you list all your ideas in our discussion section! Northern Regime is going to be a community built game.
Release Event
We are having a special release event for Northern Regime. We will be giving away $50 dollars to the first person to reach the maximum level and receive the corresponding achievement.
Comments & Input
If you have anything you want to say, or ask, please let us know we really enjoy seeing our followers become interactive it means the world to us! We'll see you all on the 29th!
Northern Regime : Stage 2 Pre-Alpha
The Team @ Northern Regime will be giving away 20 keys for our closed beta.
Hello everyone, we've been working extremely hard on the development for Northern Regime these past few weeks to try and get this game out to you as fast as possible retaining an acceptable quality of work.
The reason we need your help
We are at a point where we need as much input as possible to help us decide where our priorities should be focused. We also need to see the reaction of first impressions and get and idea of what first time users think of our game. We have to know if Northern Regime is; fun, exciting, captivating, intriguing, or interesting and there is no better way then letting our supporters test it out
How to get a key.
Pre-Alpha 1.0.02
Northern Regime Pre-Alpha 1.0.02.
Subjects that will be covered in the following text :
Difficulty Of Game-Play.
Animations.
Weapons Aiming.
Looting.
Patches.
Northern Regime Official EA Release Date.
What to Expect.
New Map Selector.
Community Created Maps.
Difficulty Of Game-Play
We have decided to increase the difficulty of game play for Northern Regime. When we first started developing and working on Northern Regime the character felt to be more like a bullet sponge than a real person. By increasing difficulty we feel it adds more realism and makes combat more skill based. It is not as much fun if you can just run through a faction group guns blazing, complete the area in 30 seconds, and not have to even think twice about hiding to bandage your character.
I'll explain how we are increasing the difficulty in a dynamic way. Getting shot by an enemy 3-4 times in a row, without healing will kill you almost instantly. This will force you as the player to slow down and take it easy from afar. This creates an interesting long range combat system. We increased bullet damage by almost two times what it was originally for the enemy but, we have programmed a new enemy gun shot system. This system currently decreases accuracy the more your character moves as if the enemy is adjusting his sighting. So if you are remain frozen trying to aim down an enemy there is a bigger chance you will be killed. currently we are working on a new cover system. When you get near a wall you will be able to automatically lock to it to avoid being
hit.
Animations.
This is just a short blurb. The previous update we talked about how we added a more dynamic character controller. With this we have
finally added additional animations, like backing up and crouching.
Weapons Aiming.
We have been working hard on programming a better aiming system with the new implementation of first person ADS. It right now is looking and feeling a lot better. When your character is not aiming down sights your cross hair will be quite large, aiming it will then become about 3/4s of the original size, when you are crouching and aiming down sights it will be half of what it is normally.
Looting.
Northern Regime has a brand new randomly generated looting system, we also programmed a super easy loot editor so when ever we do want to create new awesome items for you guys it'll just take an image and then a few clicks of the mouse to add it. With this we'll be allowing the community to create unique items for the game. We'll have a community section on our website for people to submit their items or you can head over to our community hub - discussions to suggest items right now. The new randomly generated loot system will take numbers from how many times you have been getting the same item it will then give you an increased chance of getting something in greater value. So if there is a bug, or if you have been getting super unlucky it will boost your chances to make you happier.
Patches.
We fixed a major lag issue that has been stumping us for almost an entire month! You may have seen on our twitter we talked about how embarrassing it was. The explanation is basically we had our map selector choice algorithm on an endless loop. So the frame rate was still quite high but every few seconds while rotating you would receive a huge lag spike. This was just the script looping. We have fixed this and it gives us so much more motivation to continue working hard.
Northern Regime Official EA Release Date.
Given the response of our straw poll from the previous update we have decided to release on September the 29th. This will give us a tremendous opportunity to get criticism, ideas, opinions, and help from the community. To be able to receive this information it will give us so much perspective on what we need to be working on and what we need to add to make the community happy. Like we said before we want this game to be molded by the people who play it. If you don't care about adding ideas, criticism, or helping with development we suggest you wait to buy the game at a later date!
What to Expect.
When we do release Northern Regime we hope to have at least 5-8 total groups to raid and one friendly group to buy and sell items from. The great
thing about our new system is that you can revisit places on the map you have already defeated and fight again and gather more loot.So when we do add more content you will be prepared. We plan on releasing huge chunks of content; maps, items, new rares, new enemies, etc.every 2 weeks after early access is out to keep you guys happy and engaged. When Early Access is complete will will be releasing dlc every single month and it will be as gigantic as we can get it. Dlc will be completely free for the entire lifespan of NR.
New Map Selector.
Now when entering a group to raid you will be given a 2 dimensional map with the state of Dakota slit up into small sections to choose from. As we progress through development the map will slowly expand until it is as big as it can get.
Community Created Maps.
We will be compiling a small bundle of our project into a pre-fab in which you guys can un wrap in your own unity project. This will include the base items and textures that we use to develop maps. This will allow you guys to develop your own cool maps that will be featured in the game if they are awesome enough :) Once again we will have a section on our website where you guys can submit these projects!
Minor Additions
Added cross-hair. At long distances it was hard to tell if you had killed an
enemy without proper confirmation.
Worked on camera distance and movement for comfort.
Thank you everyone I look forward to hearing your thoughts!
Pre-Alpha 1 Complete & Release Date
- Alpha 1
Northern Regime Alpha 1.0.0.0 is officially done. The map selection works well, the fighting and new animations are smooth, graphics have been improved, and lag has been changed substantially since the previous build. Northern Regime is now half third person and half first person. You will remain third person but when you aim in you will transform into a first person mode with your weapon drawn. This adds so much more immersion and excitement to battling those confederate enemies.
- New Character Controller
We have also recently programmed a new movement and physics function to the game. Previously it was a little strange. We were strictly using a third person controller which didn't make sense when switching to first person mode. You couldn't run left of right without aiming in that direction. You also could not move backwards in any state. Another problem was physics and sliding, if you were to jump off a steep cliff or hill you would practically stay completely still. Now you will automatically slide down the hill not being able to stop yourself until you reach a flatter area. We plan to add a sliding animation in the near future. With the new controller we were also able to fix the movement speed of the character. The character now runs and walks at a realistic speed before it was slow and boring it may have been more realistic but it didn't feel right. We did try to change to speed by increasing animation speed but this made the game feel cheesy and even more unrealistic. With the new controller it will allow us to continue tweaking movement until we find a perfect medium.
- First Person Mode.
First person was a little rough at the start as you might expect. When aiming in the enemies still felt very far away and almost invisible. This was do to our high field of view in the game. When aiming, now, your field of view will slowly decrease by 20 points from 80 making it feel as if you are adjusting your eyes, or closing one and leaving the other open, as you would if you were actually aiming down a sight.
- New Cross Hair.
Our old cross hair was merely a red cross lined to the center of your screen.
This wasn't very optimal for the standards of Northern Regime. First of all it was red which really didn't fit the theme, it would have been okay if this was a low poly shooter. The new cross hair consists of 3 triangles making one triangle. One at the top and two at the bottom. The greatest thing about the new cross hair is if you are extremely far away it will be very difficult to hit an enemy. The old one was 100 percent accurate from really anywhere. We haven't added programming to the cross hairs yet, we plan to make it so when you do shoot they will expand for half a second or so then return smaller, we'll also add this to when you are running, rotating, and jumping we'll also need to make them even smaller when you are crouching and lying down.
Having A Good Time Exploring
Although Northern Regime will not be a complete Open World game, we still want to add exciting exploration and things to find in the maps you travel to. Instead of simple camps with a few tents and a few confederate enemies we are going to be adding awesome fortress' , buildings, traps, and all sorts of things to make the game a little more exciting and a little more lively. We have been testing out a few new fortress models with defense towers, and all we can say is we're glad we did so. When alpha 2 comes up we are going to be making new trailers and game-play videos to show off all that we had added so everyone can see what we have been doing!
Help From You Guys!
What would you guys like to see in the next update of Northern Regime? We are very open to ideas, opinions, and criticism from the community. So if you have anything to say to us we would love to listen! - Axel.
Release Date.
We have set up a straw poll to get input on when you guys would like to see the game released and in what state you want it to be. It's very important to get feedback so please take a few seconds and vote!
http://www.northernregime.com/northern-regime.html
Thank You!
Before I head off, I would just like to thank everyone who has been supporting these posts with all the likes and feedback. It really makes a difference when making the game knowing there are people out there who want to play and follow along development. So thank you very much. I owe everything to the people following this awesome project!
Northern Regime Pre-Alpha 1.0.0.0
The First Build Of Northern Regime Alpha 1 Is Almost Complete.
Northern Regime Alpha 1.0.0.0 will be available on September 4th to those who have pre-ordered the basic package at http://www.northernregime.com/pre-order.html
To See Images for this build http://www.northernregime.com/northern-regime.html
This Is What We Have Added To Alpha 1
Alpha 1.0.0.0 :
Terrain Detail
- Terrain has been improved drastically. It now uses bump maps to exude depth, previously seemed to appear as if it was painted on. this depleted in-game immersion.
Format Change
- Changed the layout of Northern Regime. It will no longer be an "Open World Game" It is still open world in a sense. Instead of walking around a large world it will now be split up into surfable map which allows you to instantly teleport to various camps.
- Removed mines from Northern Regime. Resources will now be added by defeating groups, and then selling said resources to friendly faction branches located on the player map.
Map Selector
- Added a map selector. You can now surf through a large map to decide which groups and faction branches to initiate battles with. When you come close to a faction group a page will pop up in the center of your screen estimating the amount of possible members in the location, the yield you may receive from defeating the group, the location of where the group is, and the difficulty. These different hints will help you decide whether or not you are prepared to attack
Quality Of Life
- Added nice transitions and loading screens to make the game smoother and sleeker when loading the game or transitioning through scenes and menus.
- Lighting, shadows, and level detail have been improved immensely.
- Character movement, speed, and animations have been improved to add realism and depth. Previously the character moved too slow, now that it is faster it does improve the excitement of battle and the game in general.
- Fixed a major lag issue when rotating the character camera as well as preforming gun fights. The game now runs at 90-120 frames per second on a
gtx 760, i5 3570k, and 16 gigabytes of run on windows 8.
- Added more vibrant foliage, trees, sky, and ambient fog to increase liveliness of Northern Regime.
- Added a dynamic day and night cycle. However, you most likely will not see an entire cycle as you won't be in a particular location for longer than 10-15 minutes at most depending on the group difficulty
Rag Dolls
- Added rag doll physics to enemies. It was a bit repetitive to see the same boring animations preformed every time you killed an enemy. It makes the game more exciting and fun while capturing locations
Combat Fix
- Changed dynamics of combat. Damage on enemies can now take between 1-3 shots to kill, before it was a one shot kill each time which seemed unfair, and a little too easy. Enemies now do increased damage to the player depleting in between 19-29 damage each shot with slightly less accuracy.
Resource Raiding
- Added resource capturing. When defeating and enemy group you will be able to raid/capture their materials by pressing "E". A dynamic circle will appear above the resources counting down from 5. Once it has counted down you will receive a group of random items and a random quantity of those items based on a randomly generated algorithm.
